Lebanon has recorded its first death from cholera as cases surge after an outbreak of the extremely virulent disease in neighboring Syria, the health ministry said.

Lebanon has recorded 26 cases of cholera this month, as the country struggles amid poor sanitation and crumbling infrastructure after three years of unprecedented economic crisis.

Eager to admire colorful foliage, eat sushi and go shopping, droves of tourists from abroad began arriving in Japan on Tuesday, with the end of pandemic-fighting border restrictions that had been in place for more than two years.

"We got the news that we can finally come. We are really, really happy," said Nadine Lackmann, a German who was among the crowd of tourists arriving at Tokyo's Haneda airport.

Lebanon's health minister said on Friday that authorities are inspecting suspected cases of cholera, less than a day after the cash-strapped country confirmed its first case of the illness since 1993.

The news came almost a month after an outbreak of the illness in neighboring war-torn Syria.

Lebanon's health ministry on Thursday announced the crisis-hit country's first case of cholera in decades.

The announcement comes as neighboring war-torn Syria is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has spread across the country over the past month.

Syria's health ministry has recorded 39 deaths from cholera and nearly 600 cases in an outbreak spreading in the war-ravaged country that the United Nations warned is "evolving alarmingly."

Swedish scientist Svante Paabo won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for his discoveries on human evolution that provided key insights into our immune system and what makes us unique compared with our extinct cousins, the award's panel said.

Paabo has spearheaded the development of new techniques that allowed researchers to compare the genome of modern humans and that of other hominins — the Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Warning that the world is in "great peril," the head of the United Nations says leaders meeting in person for the first time in three years must tackle conflicts and climate catastrophes, increasing poverty and inequality — and address divisions among major powers that have gotten worse since Russia invaded Ukraine.

In speeches and remarks leading up to the start of the leaders' meeting Tuesday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cited the "immense" task not only of saving the planet, "which is literally on fire," but of dealing with the persisting COVID-19 pandemic. He also pointed to "a lack of access to finance for developing countries to recover -- a crisis not seen in a generation" that has seen ground lost for education, health and women's rights.

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of a "very high" risk of cholera spreading across Syria after the country recorded its first cases since 2009.

Hospitals in the Syrian capital have been put on alert after more than two dozen cases of cholera and at least three deaths were reported in the war-torn country, health officials said Monday.

The main cause of the spread appears to be people drinking polluted water as well as watering plants in some areas with unclean water.

Officials in Pakistan raised concern Wednesday over the spread of waterborne diseases among thousands of flood victims as waters from powerful monsoon rains began to recede in many parts of the country.

Some doctors said initially they were seeing mostly patients traumatized by the flooding, but are now treating people suffering from diarrhea, skin infections and other waterborne ailments in the country's flood-hit areas.